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  Dialogue - Guidelines

Marketing & Sales

Ralph & Jane Becker

Earlier this year, our WWME national executive leadership team, Bob & Joy Hernandez and Fr. Chuck Kosanke, said in their "State of the Movement" address that inviting couples and priests to attend a Marriage Encounter needs to be our primary focus. That task of inviting can be viewed as having two pieces - Marketing, and Sales.

The Marketing piece is what we all try to do each day to promote the Weekend. We are Marketing our product, which is an Encounter experience, in many ways. We may have a WWME sticker on our car and at our front door. We give brochures to people who ask about the Weekend. We have a web site, and hand out business cards with its address on it. We put announcements in Parish bulletins, put up posters, and schedule or deliver Mass talks. All these activities help make couples and priests aware of Marriage Encounter, what it is, and how to get on a Weekend.

So, with all the Marketing we do, why aren't couples beating a path to our door, flooding our phone lines, swamping our web site, and filling our Weekends? The answer may lie in the other piece of inviting, Sales. Selling the Encounter experience requires that you "close the deal", to get a couple or priest to "sign on the dotted line" by filling out and sending in their registration form and a deposit. Sales is something that usually needs to happen one-on-one, they way it does when an object like a car or a TV or a refrigerator is bought and sold. Very few things "sell themselves" - someone has to be that salesperson.

That someone is YOU!

Take the time to sell a Marriage Encounter to someone you know. Think back to your own Encounter and remember what it felt like. Be passionate about the Weekend and sell it! It's a wonderful feeling to know that you sold someone on the Weekend and got them to go, especially when they tell you what a great experience it was afterwards.

Here are some Dialogue questions to use:

Our missionary role is always to invite other people on our journey. HDIFAT?
HDIF when a couple accepts our invitation to experience the Weekend?
Do I have close friends I should invite to experience the Weekend? HDIFAT?
Do I have relatives I should invite to experience the Weekend? HDIFAT?
HDIF when I want to invite a couple to experience the Weekend but you do not?
HDIF when we invite a couple to experience the Weekend and they say "Yes"?
HDIF when we invite a couple to experience the Weekend and they say "No"?
HDIF when a couple we have invited comes home from experiencing the Weekend and thanks us?
A couple I would like to see experience the Weekend is _____. HDIF about inviting them?
Do I feel comfortable about inviting others to experience the Weekend?
HDIF about inviting couples like us to experience the Weekend?
What am I most passionate about right now? HDIFAMA?
We are not Sacrament without passion. HDIFAT?

Reprinted with permission from the WWME Massachusetts Area newsletter, the eSpirit, June, 2004

Click here for a printable page (PDF, 7KB)